Appaloosa

56

It was chilly and still raining when I walked down to the marshal’s office in the morning. Cole was sitting outside under the overhang, out of the rain. It didn’t seem like good sitting-out weather.

I said, “Morning, Virgil.”

Cole nodded, and I went in and got some coffee off the stove and poured it and brought it out, and sat in the other chair. Cole didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything or thinking about anything. He seemed to be just sitting. I sat with him and drank some coffee. It had been raining three days now. Main Street was a slough of mud. A few saddle horses moved heavily through it, but there was no wagon traffic.

“They ain’t going to run me off,” Cole said.

“We got hired,” I said. “We can get fired.”

“Me and Allie got a house here. I’m staying.”

“What you gonna stay as?” I said.

“Ain’t got to that yet,” Cole said.

“They ain’t gonna pay us,” I said.

“I know,” Cole said.

I drank some coffee.

“Might make some sense to move on,” I said.

Cole shook his head.

“You talk this over with Allie?” I said.

Cole nodded.

“She won’t go,” I said.

“No.”

I closed my eyes for a minute and opened them slowly and looked at the rain some more.

“And you won’t go without her.”

“No.”

The wet smell was strong. Wet wood, wet mud, wet horses. It mixed with the smell of wood smoke as people fired up stoves against the first rainy chill of early fall. I took in some air and let it out slowly.

So here we are.

“I got to say some things, Virgil.”

Cole nodded.

“I stay here,” he said, “and I won’t be able to make a living.”

“Soon as Olson’s mayor, he’ll fire us, and no one else will hire us.”

“I know,” Cole said.

He was still motionless. Looking at nothing. Thinking of nothing. Being nothing.

“I got something else,” I said.

“She might leave me,” Cole said.

A rider went by on a small sorrel horse. I watched the rain puddle in the collapsing imprint of the horse’s hooves. I took in another long breath and tightened my stomach muscles and hunched my shoulders and said it.

“She will,” I said. “You saw how it was with Ring Shelton. Once you ain’t the stud horse anymore…”

Cole tipped his chair back further and looked up at the sky with his head resting against the weathered exterior of the office wall.

“I won’t leave her,” he said.